Lobby room Wikipedia.
Since the mid-1980s, there has been a growing trend to think of lobbies as more than just ways to get from the door to the elevator but instead as social spaces and places of commerce. 4 5 Some research has even been done to develop scales to measure lobby atmosphere to improve hotel lobby design.

Hotel Lobby Indianapolis Museum of Art.
When a solitary figure reads, the need for escape may be internally generated Hotel Room 1931, Compartment C, Car 293 1938; but when a figure is with others, reading becomes a way of avoiding human communication Barbershop 1931, Room in New York 1932, Hotel Lobby 1943, and Chair Car 1965.

Hotel Lobby Wikipedia.
Hopper was known to model for himself for figures, as in Nighthawks, leading some to believe he may have modeled for the male figure in Hotel Lobby. One of the few paintings by Hopper to lack windows, Hotel Lobby utilizes light from the revolving door and an unseen area from between the ceiling beams.